"As in the successful “Researchers’ Night” (RN) projects in Norway 2005-2008, our RN 2009 is planned as a nation-wide promotion effort in line with the objectives of the ERA Green Paper 2007, the Lisbon Council, the Ljubljana Process and the call FP7-PEOPLE-NIGHT-2009 - organised as add-on to the coinciding “Forskningsdagene” (Norway’s National Science Week 18.-27. Sept 2009 with 1000 events by 200 local organisers all over Norway, coordinated by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The RCN submits this coordinated proposal from Norway proposing 15 subcontracted local events selected after national competition. Local and RCN co-financing are substantial. In this nationwide effort researchers are directly involved in informal contact, dialogue and collaboration with the public at large (kids, teenagers, adults and parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, politicians…), well covered by the media. Focus is on the contribution of research and researchers to the society at large, to “de-mystify” research, show that researchers are ordinary people, and how interesting it is to be a researcher. Events include ”hands-on” lab experiments, interactive settings, night in aquarium, cod aquaculture, research vessel study tour, planetarium, Gründer camps – all featuring ”real science”. Industrial partners and EU-supported researchers are included. Professionals will be invited to join the RN 2010 poster competition where winners are selected by public voting on the RCN website www.rcn.no prior to the Night’s award/exhibition ceremony at the RN Darwin Anniversary event in Oslo. The European Corner stand will be at the NTNU Open Lab event in Trondheim. We hope to match RN 2008 when awareness campaigns by nationwide newspaper inlets, advertisements, emails, web-site information, and media coverage, reached an estimated 16.7 mill and 5.8 mill people respectively – not bad for a 4.5 mill population. A reinforced impact assessment will include perceptions before/during/after the RN."